MUNGO EATS Latin America

We explored the Valdez Peninsula today, in search of penguins, elephant seals, sea lions, and other wildlife.  There is a circular route around the peninsula, with a number of viewing stations located along the way. 

Our first stop was supposed to be a resting spot for elephant seals, but unfortunately no one had told the seals to be home for pictures today.  The second station proved almost as useless.  We could  see a few elephant seals in the distance, but they were terribly far away, and not even my 12X zoom camera could bring them into view.  I was starting to feel a little down.  We had driven about 100 km and seen very little.  The next stop was supposed to have penguins.  Here we were NOT disappointed.

There was a small wire fence setting the limits for how close you could get and the silly little birds were all snuggled up, almost touching the wire, to allow us a great view of them.  I got so many cute little pictures, that I had a hard time deciding which ones to include here.  Here are the winners. 

The final stop on the route was a station that was supposed to be good for sighting sea lions and elephant seas.  Again, the elephant seals shirked their modelling duties, but the sea lions were out in full force. 

We surprisingly saw a huge number of land creatures today.  There were many guanacos,

and lesser rheas.

I chased this hairy armadillo down in the desert trying to get a picture of him. 

I was feeling quite pleased with myself, for the shot I got.  What I did not realize was that they are not terribly afraid of people and we saw a number of them at the viewing stations, and one of them walked right up to us allowing me to get this shot (unzoomed).

We also saw a few Andean foxes running in the desert and thought we were quite lucky until we saw the restaurant staff at one of the viewing stations throwing them scraps.  Makes for a nice picture, but I wish they were not feeding them. 

So quite a good day of wildlife viewing. We hope to hit one more penguin viewing station as we head south, because really, how can you ever get enough  of these guys?